Advertising's Week Off.

It's pretty well known that advertising agencies are closed the week of Christmas to New Year's . . . and if you're not . . . you should be (shame on you). This is the hiatus that most people in advertising need to recharge their batteries and actually see their families.

My week has been great so far. After a great presentation last Wednesday, I drove home and spent time with my family and have been able to work on some side projects. The rain in Arizona yesterday was a little much though. I had forgotten how badly Arizonans freak out in the rain . . . that combined with snowbirds makes for an interesting time on the freeway.

One really great thing too, our rugby ads were placed on Ads of the World two days ago, check them out here.

With the New Year upon us there are a lot of things that I hope to accomplish. It is the year of the rabbit according to the Chinese calendar, let's hop to it (sorry I couldn't resist).

Work/Life balance is huge for me so making sure that I have more of that is important. Doing some more hiking with Leroy is at the top of the Life list. 

Traveling, this is something that I haven't done in a while. I wanna go to Alaska to see a moose. They are such strange looking creatures.

Spending some serious time on one of my side projects. The response this past year was great . . . and I can't wait to get started on the second season. 

 That's it . . . three little goals for the New Year . . . hopefully I can get to all of them.

A week before Christmas and all through the office . . .

All the creatives are stirring during the winter solstice.

The stockings weren't hung by the chimney with care, because then all our feet would be cold and bare.

While everyone is nestled all snug in their beds, we're up designing all the ideas from our heads.

I'm in a hoodie and Sheena in her wrap, we settle down to concept with my dog in my lap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash, rolled up the ikea blinds and threw open the hatch.

The moon up high, shining aglow, gave a mid-day luster to the objects below.

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a regular sized shopping cart and eight cans of beer.

With a little old driver, not so lively or quick, I knew in a moment it wasn't St. Nick.

Ahh Venice. . .

Our last client presentation of the year is tomorrow! Kind of exciting, I am ready to get home and spend a week with my boys.

I have learned a lot in the last year (well really the last 6 months) and as I look back there are things I am proud of and a few that I'm not. Each of which was a learning experience.

I am looking forward to a new year of growth and learning. I have added a couple new mentors to my arsenal and continue to set the bar higher for myself, sometimes not by choice. In the end, I know what I am capable of and I will continue to roll up the sleeves and get it done.

Advertising is a crazy lifestyle and I don't know if I would trade it for any other. If you are still trying to get into the industry, let's chat, I have a new project in mind that you might be able to be a part of.

Holiday Adventure

Whew! Yesterday was C. R. A. Z. Y. The founders of High Wide & Handsome took all (8) of us took us to Napa on a day trip killing two birds with one stone. 1) to take a break and celebrate the holidays as a company. 2) allowing all of us to experience the wineries first hand, since we do their advertising.

It all started at 6:30 AM yesterday morning, Mags picked a few of us up and we hit up LAX. Just as we got to our gate they started boarding. . . you think this is cutting it close . . . juuuust wait.

So we flew from LAX to OAK, and then drove an hour up to Napa. We first visited Robert Mondavi, did the entire tour.

We then had lunch in their beautiful private dining room. We drank some great wine and over all had a wonderful time.

We then went to Chandon and toured their facilities. I learned a lot about champagne making that I never knew. We then tasted . . .

Before we knew it, it was 5PM our flight was at 7PM. So sad to say we didn't get to hit up the Bouchon Bakery. On our way back to the airport, our English driver got lost . . . and we got to the airport at 7PM. We thought we had missed our flight completely, though as we got through security (Yes, I opted out and got patted down.) Our flight was doing a final boarding call. I ran barefoot down the coradoor with my scarf, belt, half open purse and shoes in my hand. John and I were the last ones on the plane and I got the last seat. If you've ever flown Southwest you know the look I got from the people sitting in the row I went to. It's like Forest Gump Can't Sit Here syndrome, no one wants anyone to sit in the middle seat on a Southwest flight. Anyway, below are some shots from the day.

It was great and full of High Wide & Handsome memories and inside jokes.

You are tenacious like bull. I like.

Umm I love this commercial and it makes me wonder if the Russians know we are making fun of their English?

Yarn Bombing

I am in love with yarn bombers. It is such a great way to bring color to the world that doesn't hurt anything in any way. There are soo many creative people in the world and do you notice how everything man builds is grey?!

Spray paint graffiti artists have the right idea that there needs to be some color in the world, though there are taggers (very different from artists in my mind) that develop this bad association with the art. I don't know if it is possible to create that same association with yarn bombers, because no matter what, when I think about yarn I think of cute little old ladies, and I'm a 26-yo knitter!

I found a great yarn bombers blog, and if you are interested in bombing, the blog is a great resource. Below are a couple of my favorite shots from their blog and if you click on them it will take you right to their blog. Enjoy!

http://yarnbombing.com/july-link-round-up

Colletti Photography

Ok so, this is starting to become a hobby of mine, I make projects out of things I see from my friends on facebook. After a facebook posting party about how many words should be in tag lines and photographers logos, I decided to just make one. Again, these projects are just for fun. Not for professional use, as these projects don't go through a refinement process.

High Wide & Holidacious

Is it just me or do the youngest people in the agency always get charged with the holiday gift?

Expect nothing different at High Wide & Handsome. I was in charge of this year's holiday gift and I take it as kind of an honor, since it was the first one ever sent. Though as always my perfectionism got the best of me as you will see . . .

First the holiday gift just started out being a holiday scarf. Simply embroidered and then mailed out the clients . . . and over the two months I had to work on it, it slowly escalated into boxes and labels and crinkle paper. Though I won't take all the blame for all the work. My boss . . . totally as A.D.D. about details as I am.

First. The scarf, we got baller extremely soft cashmere scarves from Scotland. They then had the HWH logo on one end and the double diamond on the other. I have to say, the double diamond is my favorite representation of the HWH brand.

Second. The boxes the scarves were to be shipped in came and the inside was the brown craft and not the same black color of the outside of the box. Probbblleemm. Our color scheme was lavender, silver  and black. So to fix problem number one, we took the silver tissue paper and spray mounted (yes we rocked a bottle of Super 77) them into the boxes. Then I trimmed and folded each box. Big props to Jarrett who helped me with the spray mounting.

Next I folded each scarf so that when it was unwrapped you saw the HWH logo. Followed by wrapping it in lavender tissue paper and tying a lavender ribbon around it and securing it with a bow. Props to Matt who helped me with this.

We couldn't just put the packages in the silver lined box, we needed something to make it feel festive and fun. Crinkle paper! Wonderful idea, though no one produces silver crinkle paper . . . what'd we do? We made our own. Matt also helped me with this. We fan folded all of the tissue paper and then cut strips to make the filling. It worked great.

Third. We wanted some kind of tag on the scarves, so Mike came up with the idea of creating a booklet that showed different ways to wear the scarf. I did some simple illustrations got them all printed and cut. Matt cut the black covers which I think took longer than cutting all the three middle pages and back page combined. They did a glossy black crop mark on a matte black paper . . . it was ridiculous to see. The cover page was grommeted and the pages were held together with a 14G aluminum ring. They definitely classed up the gift.

Four. So once the boxes has been lined and stuffed with the crinkle paper and neatly wrapped scarf, they all had to be closed and labeled. We used 8.5x11 Avery labels, and printed two labels on each. The tag sat on top of the box and wrapped around the side and on to the bottom to securely seal the box.

All of this took A LOT of time. Now . . . time to mail the little suckers and Magnus offered to go with me . . . I think he regrets it. :D

We load up all the boxes into his hatchback and head over to the post office in the Marina. We only take one in thinking that maybe we can get the postage printed then take the boxes in later . . . so we get in line and wait . . . and wait . . . and wait.

While we are waiting there is no shortage of entertainment. First there are two men who look and smell homeless. They are packaging what looks to be HUNDREDS of boxes of this Acne medicine called Acne Statin, their website is horrid and now understand why homeless people are doing their fulfillment.

While they are sitting on the floor in the middle of the small post office, there is a lady that keeps asking people if she can send stuff in a box that says it's for VHS and DVDs . . . so the homeless man starts to tell her the benefits of sending things in flat rate boxes. So over the course of 5 minutes her and the homeless man wonder around the store looking for small flat rate boxes, only to come to the conclusion that they are out.

There is a man in a 1980's Southwest Fleece looking jacket with a shopping cart full of 10 manilla envelopes. Clearly he needed a shopping cart for such an exuberant number of packages (that was sarcasm)

Then there was a lady in front of us who was eavesdropping on our conversation and wanted to know where we worked because it "sounded like so much fun" imagine large eyes and jazz hands.

So finally the line begins to move. Magnus decides to ask the lady if we can do what we had planned or if we needed to bring in all 75 boxes. The short asian lady tells him, "boxes inside. all box, inside." So, Magnus looks at me and he starts to head outside to start bringing in all of the boxes.

As he is bringing in the boxes, the line begins to fill up again and people are looking at all the boxes he is bringing in and saying how excited they are and thank God he was coming in after them . . . and then he came and stood back in line with us. They. were. not. happy.

Finally our turn! Just our luck the man on the opposite side of where we stacked the boxes becomes available for us. So we had to move all the boxes from one side of the post office to the other. James was our teller and looked like a black Santa. Though, he wasn't jolly. at .all.

Just about now the homeless men are now behind us as we are at the counter. One of them is talking about myself and Magnus, saying how we didn't have postage on our boxes and that the other homeless man shouldn't have let us in front of them (which he didn't we were in line waaay before they finished their boxes and were 5 people BEHIND us.) The second homeless man just kept saying "I didn't see her. I didn't see her." No shit sherlock, because we were in front of you. And. You come to the post office to. get. postage.

After all of that came my favorite part of the ENTIRE 2.5 hours we were at the post office. There were 2 separate women and a couple ask us what was in the boxes and that the packaging "was beautiful." After telling them we were an advertising agency they were like "oh, no wonder." They didn't know everything was done by hand with no more than myself and one other working on something at a time. It completely made my night. I really hope that the clients like them just as much.

Final Product:

This is what happens when ADs get bored.

So being an art director, I think that you are automatically diagnosed with A.D.D. I sat down tonight to work on my website and I end up with a 10 second short promoting a friend's blog.

I get these sporatic sparks of ideas and I just want to make them, sometimes they happen . . . sometimes they don't.

While working at Y&R San Francisco our floor was being renovated, so we moved up to the 9th floor for a bit. Susan Lee our part HR/part Bartender had us pull numbers from a hat and that decided where we sat. Across from me was Kerry Ko and Toby McKinnon, and this possibly, was the most entertaining part of the ninth floor. They would get in some of the best arguments and sometimes I played translator because Toby is Australian and sometimes people just stare at him because we have NO CLUE what he is saying.

Anyway, one time they started talking about each other's outfits and I can't really remember all of it, but come to find out Kerry takes a picture of her outfit everyday and blogs about it. So I thought it would be interesting to roll through some of her outfits really fast . . . yes I understand it's not the most original thing in the world. But it was fun to make. Also, notice how Kerry stands the same way everyday and her facial expression is almost identical the entire way through.

Where do I check in?!

So I have been using foursquare, facebook places, and yelp to check in for the past week. I can't seem to choose because there are things that I like about all of the applications and some things that I can't stand . . .
Foursquare -

PROS -
- Badges - I love getting badges. Yes, I know they are little digital icons that take no time to make, but that doesn't change the fact that I love to "feel" recognized for checking in somewhere I would go reguardless.

- Privacy - I do like that you can only tell your friends on foursquare where you are instead of shouting it out to everyone in the world, sometimes you just don't want people to know where you are . . .

CONS
- To Do List - Not really a con as much as a what the fuck? Does anyone really use this?

Yelp -

PROS -
- Reviews - It's cool that your check-ins are tied to your reviews and all of that can go together, but I am not sure how many times I would actually write a review on my phone. Maybe that's where foursquare's to do list would come in handy.

- Geolocator Map - I love that I can stand in the world and hold my phone up and it will show me the names and ratings of the stores and restaurants around me. I wish this feature was in foursquare.

CONS -

- Recognition - There are titles and rankings such as duchess of a place which is kind of cool, but again no badges.

Facebook Places - 

PROS - 

It's in facebook.

CONS - 

It's in facebook and there are NO badges.

So all in all after writing this I think that I will just stick to foursquare. I like the badges more than anything so, if I need to see ratings I will use yelp . . . but just not to check in. As for facebook places, I might use it sparingly . . . since there is no real incentive to use it . . . why use it other than to tell your entire FB friend list where you are. That only seems good if you are at work or the airport. . .

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner: Foursquare

Sons of Anarchy - Spoiler Warning

I am really happy the boys went to jail at this end finale because last season when Abel was kidnapped I was not so happy I had to wait until this season to find out what happened. It was a little bit of a drama let down that they all knew about the ATF deal but at least Jax doesn't have to get his ass kicked.

Check out the interview with the Sons creator. CLICK HERE

Now we wait for Season 4 . . .